Clashes in Bangladesh between police and supporters of Jamaat-e-Islami have left five people dead. PHOTO:AFP
Shops and businesses were closed and main roads were largely deserted of cars in the capital Dhaka, for the strike called by supporters.
Hundreds of rival secular protesters gathered at a central Dhaka square amid tight security, with thousands of police patrolling the streets on foot, AFP reporters said.
A local war crimes tribunal is expected later Wednesday to hand down its verdict against the second highest-ranked leader of the Jamaat-e-Islami party for alleged crimes during the 1971 war.
The verdict is the second this week by the International Crimes Tribunal after Jamaat's 90-year-old spiritual leader Ghulam Azam was convicted on Monday and sentenced to 90 years in prison for masterminding atrocities during the war.
That verdict prompted the nationwide strike by Jamaat supporters who took to the streets in violent protests with police that killed five people.
The trials have divided the country with secularists demanding the execution of all the accused, and Islamic leaders branding the trials a sham, aimed at eliminating their leaders.
Ali Ahsan Mohammad Mujahid, 65, who could face the death penalty if convicted on Wednesday, was an influential minister in the 2001-2006 government headed by current opposition leader Khaleda Zia.
Mujahid, currently the secretary general of Jamaat, faces seven charges of murder, mass killing, torture, arson and abduction during the war against Pakistan.
The verdict will be the tribunal's sixth. Previous judgements have sparked widespread violence in a country with a population that is 90 percent Muslim.
Some 155 people have been killed in the unrest, including the five this week.
Prosecutors have described Mujahid as a key architect of killings of intellectuals by militias that took place towards the end of the nine-month war.
"As the president of Jamaat's now defunct student wing, he was the chief of the notorious Al Badr militia between October and December in 1971," prosecutor Muklesur Rahman Badal told AFP.
"Al Badr was a killing squad. It carried out the abduction and killing of the intellectuals," he said.
Dozens of Bangladesh's top professors, journalists, doctors and writers were killed in December 1971 in the most gruesome chapter of the war, in which the government says three million people were killed in total.
The bodies of the intellectuals were found blindfolded and their hands tied in a marsh at the outskirts of the capital.
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@Truth: Truth I am glad that Bangladesh is progressing. The point here is that there is a utility to everything and a nuisance too. It is the function of court and agencies to analyze the utility and harm of each decision made. A progressing Bangladesh is an ideal for Pakistan but to open the pages of history again to ransack Bengal for three days is injustice to Bangladesh itself. @Diogenes: You see Bangladesh is not linked to Pakistan via a border with a rival in between. Bangladesh does not see any killing by Indian security forces! Bengalis are not a victim of torture by an expansionist nation! And today these events continue whatever the time is. So Please do not compare Bangladesh and Kashmir :)
@Umar:
Is history a closed chapter for Bangladesh but an open question for the Kashmir dispute?
@Umar: The culprits should have to be punished, no matter if it take decades.This shows the real difference between progressive bangladesh and non progressive pakistan.
Why are the South Asian nations so keen to open the books of history again including Pakistan India and Bangladesh? 20 children die in some school in India and they are yet spending huge sums of money on army to become a superpower in next 2 decades? India should realize that today the P5 have the lowest poverty rates, have even better education and literacy rates and moreover are not a victim to divides in society. Pakistan is facing a social backlash plus an economic failure yet to trial Musharraf is more important than actually moving on to Balochistan and KPK to ensure peace and stability? The case of Musharraf seems more personal than constitutional especially when the judge panel has Iftikhar Chaudhry. The case of Musharraf is today equivalent to another backlash where the departments of army and intelligence maybe put at stake particularly after the Abottabad Commission Report. It would only waste the time of judiciary! Bangladesh was just prospering as an economy but it had to open up those records of 1971 to punish a 90 year old person ignoring the social backlash that had to take place? And now it is seeing the third day closure of markets depressing Bengalis home and abroad.